40                      During Two Indian Campaigns

                   The Taste of the Savages for Scenery        41

A Paradise of Nature--The Cheyenne Eden--Beauty and Squalor--­Indian Courtship and Marriage--A Wigwam--The deserted Camp--An Ancient Couple--An Outraged Captive--Burning of Cheyenne and Sioux Lodges by Hancock--$100,000 destroyed­--The Conflagration a Necessity--Hancock and the Indian Department.

                                             April 20th, 1867.

THE Cheyenne village is located in the centre of a grove of noble elms, which covers a square area of three hundred paces along the banks of the Pawnee River. From our tent door the white tops of the Indian wigwams may be seen, gleaming through the trees. The aborigines undoubtedly display great taste in the selection of their camping grounds. Water and wood are indispensable necessities to the Indian, as well as to the white settler. But the savages, roaming at large over the whole country, can select, of all the thousand and one lovely spots which Nature has so bountifully provided, the loveliest of all. And it is without exaggeration we style the spot on which the Indians pitched their village as scenically pretty. But within, the village is foul, so foul, indeed, as to defy description.
    We may shock the sensibilities of romance-loving boys and' girls by relating the manner in which the dark-eyed aboriginal damsel is espoused. There have

42                      During Two Indian Campaigns

been poems sung on the beauties of Pocahontas and Hiawatha, but we have not seen an Indian girl yet that we could compose an ode upon. The voluptuous form, olive features, ripe, red lips, delicate feet, well-­formed ankles, humid eyes, wavy masses of raven hair, a queenly head and a swan-like neck, as described by the Cooper and Murray type of romancers, we have not seen. But we have seen matter-of-fact, and most unromantic Indian girls handling dextrously the axe, cutting wood for their liege lord's supper, who were remarkable for coarse black hair, low foreheads, blazing coal-black eyes, faces of a dirty, greasy colour, who were not over modestly dressed, and who sometimes carried staring, round-eyed, and grinning papooses, on whom they seemed to scorn to bestow the maternal endearments so natural to a mother's heart.
    When an Indian wishes a squaw to attend his lodge, cook his meals, and wait upon him, he does not launch into lyrical enthusiasm; nor does he think in his wooing mood of the existence of a sky or the green woods about him, but simply asks the prosaic question, "How much is she worth?" The amount being ascertained, and if he has the means, he lays it at the feet of her father, and takes her to his lodge. From that time she is his own. Probably the manner in which he has been raised accounts for his matter-­of-fact manner of treating the fair sex. When an infant, he was looked upon as an encumbrance, by his inexpressive mother. This treatment probably

                   The Wigwam and its Furniture               43

called forth that Spartan stoicism and hardihood for which the North American savage is celebrated.
    The style and architecture of a "wigwam" is almost invariably the same, its size varying from fifty to seventy-five feet in circumference at the base, and in height from the base to the apex of the tent about twelve feet. Twenty poles planted around and meeting at the top, where they are tied firmly with a covering of tanned buffalo robes, form the wigwam. The top is left open to represent a window, and a flap in the side represents a door, by which the Indian enters on all fours. In this unpartitioned lodge sleep the Indian, his wife (or wives), and children, and frequently his children's husbands and their wives.
    The furniture is quite in keeping with the "house." Name the saucepan, camp-kettle, three or four horn spoons, of home manufacture, two or three wooden dishes, likewise of home manufacture, and you have as thorough an inventory as any auctioneer could make. It is not by inadvertence that the coffee­-roasting, grinding, and boiling apparatus are absent from the list, for the luxury of a cup of coffee is not amongst the home comforts of the Indian, unless he has lately visited a Government fort. Half-a-dozen buffalo robes are the only articles approaching bed furniture which he possesses, all of which contain an accumulation of filth and vermin. Towels and soap are of course unknown luxuries, and his personal costume entirely accords with his other domestic equipments, his scanty and only covering being a

44                      During Two Indian Campaigns

"breech-clout," generally ragged, and never washed. Of course in winter the Indian covers his nakedness with a red blanket, or a buffalo robe, or an army overcoat.
    Morality is hardly known amongst the Indians; but it frequently happens that when a squaw is unfaithful to her spouse her nose is cut off (!), which, surely, does not add to the beauty of her countenance. As a mother, the squaw ranks but little above the lower animals, she makes no preparation for child­birth, and possessing, apparently, no instinctive fore­thought, she as frequently introduces her young into the world on the open prairie as under the friendly shelter of the wigwam. The papoose is swaddled in any chance rag that offers, and the mother resumes her work or journey as if nothing had happened.
    Among the only living beings found in the deserted village were one old warrior and his squaw, one little captive girl, two grown dogs, one young Indian "purp," and five or six miserable Indian ponies. The old Indian warrior had seen, as he himself expressed it, "eighty summers," and with his squaw was found in the most sorry plight, and when brought into our camp to be fed, expressed a wish to be taken into his own lodge to be left there to die in peace. He had been left, according to the traditional custom of the Indians, to die. Being old, decrepit, and useless, and of no earthly use to his tribe, he had been left there to starve with his

                   The Burning of the Indian Village           45

squaw. The squaw was found busily preparing a dog for supper. They were provided with five days' rations, which would prove sufficient, while we stayed to watch proceedings in the neighbourhood of the Cheyenne camp. The outraged girl seems to be eight years old, and is undoubtedly white. She was taken care of by our surgeon, Dr. Breuer, and is at present doing as well as could be expected.
    This morning General Hancock ordered the Indian lodges to be burnt. He was compelled to adopt this course, because, after the delivery of his speech to the fifteen chiefs, they went and burnt three stations on the Smoky Hill route, and scalped, disembowelled, and burnt three men employed at Fossil Creek station, ran off several mules and horses on that route, and gave a good scare generally to the traders. According to Custer's official report to General Hancock, the stations hands are leaving for "America," east of the Missouri River, and the ranchmen are barricading their ranches, and preparing for a desperate resistance.
    At a council of war, it was deemed advisable to retaliate immediately by burning the Indian village.
    The following is a true list of the miscellanea which were consigned to the flames this morning: 251 lodges, 942 buffalo robes, 436 horn saddles, 435 travesties, 287 bead mats, 191 axes, 190 kettles, 77 frying-pans, 350 tin cups, 30 whetstones, 212 sacks of paint, 98 water kegs, 7 ovens, 41 grubbing horns, 28 coffee mills, 144 lariat ropes, 129 chairs, 303 parflecks,

46                      During Two Indian Campaigns

15 curry combs, 67 coffee pots, 46 hoes, 81 flicking irons, 149 horn spoons, 27 crowbars, 73 brass kettles, 17 hammers, 8 stewpans, 15 drawing knives, 25 spades, 4 scythes, 8 files, 19 bridles, 8 pitchforks, 15 teakettles, 90 spoons, 15 knives, 10 pickaxes, 1 sword, 1 bayonet, 1 U. S. mail bag, 74 stone mallets, 1 lance, 33 wooden spoons, 251 doormats, 48 raw hide ropes, and 22 meat stones.
    The loss of these articles will be severely felt by the Indian tribes--Cheyennes and Sioux. It will require 3,000 buffaloes to be killed to procure enough hides to make their "wigwams." The whole outfit of an entire wigwam costs, on an average, one hundred dollars. Six different stacks were made of the effects taken from the village; everything was promiscuously thrown in, and fire set to them all at the same moment. The dry poles of the wigwams caught fire like tinder, and so many burning hides made the sky black with smoke. Flakes of fire were borne on the breeze to different parts of the prairie, setting the prairie grass on fire. With lightning speed the fire rolled on, and consumed an immense area of grass, while the black smoke slowly sailed skyward. Every green thing, and every dead thing, that reared its head above the earth, was consumed, while the buffalo, the antelope, and the wolf fled in dismay from the destructive agent.
    At this retaliation the Indian agents cry with hands aloft, "Oh Lord, what will become of Hancock?" The General commanding has been very kind and

                   Reception at Fort Dodge                     47

courteous to the agents, but everything that he has done, so far, has been met by them with acrimonious censure. Considering the explicit nature of his instructions from the War Department, there is no necessity for the deference which he pays them, but he has wished to show them and the country at large that if they have more experience in Indian affairs than himself, he is quite willing to profit by their advice. But the Indians deceived him and commenced hostilities, and he was compelled to burn their villages. He had waited patiently at Larned for the chiefs to come to the council, but they only came in groups of twos and threes five days after the day appointed for it, which involved him in endless embarrassment.
    Custer has gone northward in hot pursuit on the trails of the Indians, and will probably not halt until he reaches their encampment on Beaver Creek.

Source:

Stanley, Henry M., D.C.L., My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia, Vol. 1, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905, pp. 41-47.